


the apocalypse will blossom

by silverhymn



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Soulmates, Spoilers for Book 3: The Empire of Gold
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:08:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29686515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverhymn/pseuds/silverhymn
Summary: Some souls don't die. They have unfinished business.
Relationships: Duriya (Daevabad)/Rustam e-Nahid
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	the apocalypse will blossom

**Author's Note:**

> different names b/c of different lives, but they are the same ppl in the tags. i just meant to write a basic reincarnation au but it became this *gestures vaguely* 
> 
> (title is inspired by a jenny holzer truism)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i listened to "in your eyes" by the weeknd (feat. doja cat) while i wrote this, if you wanna know the emotional vibes. the second part will be... different

_Nahri didn’t know what to say. Her heart ached with the knowledge of her parents’ fates. They had fought so hard to save her and to build lives for themselves in an impossible world, only to be cut down by Manizheh._

_And yet she’d also seen enough to know they’d be proud of her. Nahri felt a yearning, intimate closeness with her mother, their lives almost mirrored. The lonely little girl set apart in the human world by magic, who’d been crushed in Daevabad. The woman who’d fought tooth and nail to get back to her homeland with an infant still at her breast. Nahri was a survivor, but she didn’t think even she had as much strength as her mother._

I am as much Duriya as I am Rustam. _Nahri had spent so much of her life focused on her Nahid heritage, and yet it was her mother, the smooth-talking shafit fighter who’d outwitted Manizheh in death to protect her child, whom Nahri had more in common with._

_It gave her more peace than she would have imagined possible._

_“We have each other now,” Nahri said finally, still holding her grandfather’s hand. “And we’ll honor her memory.”_

_For Nahri was going to bring forth a world in which her mother would have been free._

* * *

The heads were impaled on pikes, mouths stuffed with so many relics that, from a distance, all you could see was sunlight glinting off the metallic vomit. Only after approaching the horrific sight did Kaveh understand: this was how the ifrit had desecrated the corpses of Anahid’s last descendants. 

That was the story that he told King Ghassan, too wracked with emotion to do anything but let the words spill out. Kaveh had never been much of a noble, a country bumpkin whose only real connection to Daevabad’s courts was his staunch loyalty to the Nahids. A true believer. 

The city’s noble families were different, but they would never admit it. Spoken aloud, their truth was political suicide—they only held loyalty for Daevabad itself, and they would align themselves with any ruler, as long as it kept their coffers full. 

This applied to the city’s Daeva nobles more than anyone. These families had chosen to support the Qahtanis in the civil war. Knowing that Daevas considered the Nahids holy messengers, an outsider might wonder why. The inquiry was irrelevant to the Daevabadi political machine: with no real power, Manizheh and Rustam served only as the dying gasps of a once-formidable dynasty. 

Still, while the siblings were alive, the Daeva nobles had treated them with unquestioning reverence. Looking upon Kaveh, his body bent by the weight of his grief, they could not help but consider the impossibility of a Nahid resurgence, a world where they didn’t have to apologize for their very existence just to retain favor. 

Every Daeva family was present to mourn the death of this golden dream—all but one. 

As far as these families go, the Karim family was quite small, consisting of just a husband, a wife, and one child. They weren’t expecting any other children, but (quite unusual for marriages in these circles), the husband and wife actually liked each other. Nearly a century after they received their heir, they were blessed with a second son. 

He would have arrived on this mortal plane right around the time that the Nahid siblings left it, though the family wouldn’t recognize this cosmic irony until much later. After the arduous birth, the new mother collapsed back onto her bed. The servants swaddled the new baby in white cotton before returning him to her arms.

The mother appraised the face of her creation, running her fingers over the plumpness of his cheeks, the slope of his nose—everything so small!—until she reached his eyes, scrunched up in protest of the light. After adjusting, they opened, revealing irises like infinite pools of black ink. 

The mother was shocked. The baby lived for barely an hour, but he already had the eyes of an adult. A survivor. She had seen them before, but she couldn’t remember where. The answer only came to her later, when the household finally received news of the Nahids’ death. 

_He has the eyes of the Baga Nahid._ Blasphemy, but now that the mother recognized what her brain was trying to say, she couldn’t unsee it. Rustam always hid his face behind his white veil, but those eyes were unmistakable, edged with the sadness that had come to define his existence.

The mother shoved the dead man out of her mind, looking down at the baby nestled in the crook of her arm. Her son would have a better life. 

* * *

Considering the rarity of pureblood births, the birth of a noble child merited a week-long event, but any public commemoration would be tasteless during these times. The parents would have been content to keep their joy to themselves. Their oldest son had different ideas. 

The people could not be stuck in their mourning forever. Around when the second son began to crawl, the heir wrote to all of Daevabad’s noble families, inviting them to an extended celebration of his brother’s first year of life. In a moment of hubris, he even sent a letter to the king. Ghassan, of course, did not attend. To the credit of the Karim family’s reputation as Qahtani loyalists, they received a letter weeks later, a personal apology for their monarch’s absence. 

A massive silk tent was conjured for the nighttime festivities, constructed with enough rooms to become a miniature palace. Silver lanterns hung suspended in the air, lighting up the inside with their contained fire. Servants ducked in and out of the crowd with trays—food, yes, but mostly wine. Lots and lots of wine. If it wasn’t already obvious, these parties are never planned with the child’s best interests in mind. 

The baby had the ideal temperament for these not-quite ideal circumstances. Passed from guest to guest, he remained sweet and biddable, so quiet that he effectively became an ornament. Somehow, he ended up in a makeup room that had been commandeered by a group of courtesans. None of them knew what to do with him. 

One of the courtesans, a cheerful half-Agnivanshi woman, plopped the baby down on a wooden table covered with cosmetics. When the heir burst into the room, searching frantically for his little brother, he discovered that the baby had smeared crimson lip paint all over his face. Upon seeing the mess, all the courtesan did was laugh. 

The heir was smitten at first sight. Nobody was surprised by their quick engagement except for his parents, who did not share the enthusiasm. They wouldn’t have agreed to the marriage without Roya joon’s intervention. Years later, the heir and the second son would laugh about the whole thing, unaware of how parental approval had been obtained. 

The family kept Roya to themselves. She had been born during the civil war, an ancestor too distant to be called grandmother. Enslaved for more than a thousand years, she had only known freedom for a short portion of her life. Sometimes, she forgot it. A vacant look would enter her eyes, and she would disappear for days. Slavery had given her the gift of invisibility. 

The Karims respected her deeply, but they never truly understood her. She was a specter. She had never been theirs. 

To everyone’s surprise, Roya did not place much stock in the belief of Daeva purity. When the parents raised their dissent, she turned her hollowed emerald eyes on them and said, “Let it be.” The parents gave in. 

There were no more arguments during the second son’s childhood. The boy grew up carefully shielded from the Daevabadi politics that had shaped his family’s existence. Every mention of the Nahids was greeted with careful blankness on his parents’ faces. They regurgitated the basic information he could get from anyone else, but the boy wanted more. Hadn’t they known the siblings personally? Didn’t the Baga Nahid free Roya himself? 

Roya—he could get something interesting from her. Fear made the boy’s heart beat faster, but he persevered, stuttering his request out during afternoon tea. It was the only time they had alone. Roya joon’s honey dropped outside her cup before her motions smoothed out. Silently, she reached over for another spoonful. 

The boy figured that was the end of it, until one night, when his parents had left for a political function. Roya took him in his arms and swept into her room, depositing the boy onto her bed. “Now we can speak.”

The boy perked up, ready to pepper his Roya joon with a barrage of questions, but she held up her hand. “The first thing you must understand is this: these memories are like wounds. Every time you stick your finger in one, it disrupts the healing.”

“Sorry.” The analogy had gone over the boy’s head, but guilt wormed into him regardless. “I thought they were… loyal to the Qahtanis.” He said the last part very quietly. Questioning this meant that there were other options—treasonous ones. 

“Your family is doing what they should. Do you think it’s easy, being a Daeva family under this regime? They’re trying to survive.” 

The boy’s brow furrowed. He’d once snuck into the shafit quarter for a thrill, only to see beggars lining the street, their skin clinging to their bones. His upbringing had smothered him, but after that visit, its comfort didn’t seem bad at all. “I thought we were fine.” 

Roya laughed, almost bitterly. “So sheltered.” But she held him close. If she could help it, he would always be this way. 

* * *

In his first act of rebellion, the boy snuck off to the plains of Daevabad, his family’s ancestral bow hidden in a cheap burlap sack. On a busy festival night, the crowd paid little attention to the inconspicuous figure weaving its way to the outside gate. Once he entered the deserted grasslands, it was as if he never existed.

After reaching a copse of trees, he emptied the sack. A thrill ran through him, same as the first time he ran his hands over the bow’s elegant curve. Disguising such a glorious contraption felt like a crime, but now it was free. Under the midnight sky, the silver glowed like moonlight made solid. He held an arrow up for examination, its point a glinting star. 

Noblemen are prone to self-delusion. Childhood surrounds them with only two types of people: servants paid to cater their every whim and a family that believes the privilege of their bloodline elevates them above all others. Nature and nurture become inseparable, transforming even the smartest of men into fools. 

The boy had forgotten his encounter with the shafit beggars. When he held the bow—incorrectly—he became Darayavahoush e-Afshin, the warrior of legend. So powerful that he’d struck fear into the heart of Zaydi al Qahtani. The boy imagined that strength, imagined himself embodying it. Moving into position, he fired. 

The boy was not an Afshin. He missed. 

He fired a few more arrows. These all missed their mark just as faithfully. By this point, his arms throbbed with the effort of holding a weapon meant for a fully-grown warrior. Instead of flinging them to the ground, he placed the bow and quiver against the tree trunk he meant to hit. It was an admirable show of self-restraint.

He made up for it by screaming, just a little bit, and stomping his way back home.

But, to his credit, he didn’t give up. On busy nights, he ran back to the thicket. He shot at the trees until his arms shook, calluses forming on his fingers. His body learned the bow. By the time he mastered it, the boy had become a fine young man. 

And then Nahri e-Nahid came to Daevabad. 

Secretly, the man had always doubted the holiness of the Nahids. If they had Suleiman’s blessing, why did they lose the city? Why did they die out? The man didn’t understand why the Daevas considered Anahid’s line godly until Banu Nahri entered court. 

She looked nowhere near holy as she presented herself to King Ghassan, but the man was struck by a bolt of devotion. The teasing from his friends was irrelevant when it came to this. He requested to join the royal guard, expecting nothing to come of it. When his brother said yes, he spit out his tea.

“Hide your calluses,” the heir advised. “You’ll never get near the Banu Nahida if they think you’re useful.”

If Ghassan had his way, the Daeva would never set their eyes on Nahri again. However, the man’s brother was close to Muntadhir, who had much looser convictions. Through the connection with the emir, the man secured a post overlooking the late Baga Nahid’s garden.

When he told the other guardsmen of his boredom, they looked at him strangely. With writhing vines and choking perfumery, the garden should have gone feral, driving him away as it had all the previous wardens. The man laughed at these ridiculous stories, but over the months, he unearthed their glimmers of truth. 

Lumps of soil evened out, oranges deposited in little piles, flowers blooming neat and evenly: the greenery went out of its way to make life easier for its shafit workers. It made no such accommodation for any of the pureblooded djinn that wandered into its domain, except for Banu Nahri and himself. 

In fact, the garden took every opportunity to push them together, but the man knew that the palace would perceive any conversation between them as collusion. He would be removed immediately, and she would be punished. While he didn’t have the heart to interrupt the lady’s peace, he relished what little contact they had. Once, Nahri had waved at him. He was too giddy to do anything but smile back.

Sometimes, his devotion alarmed him. Not borne of familiarity or romantic feelings, it was a bone-deep certainty that he’d died for her once. He would do it again, gladly.

* * *

Years passed, but the man’s superiors kept him stationed in the garden. If he wanted excitement, he was out of luck, but the peace suited him. The land itself contented in doing his job, providing him an abundance of free time. 

Out of convenience, he took up a drawing habit. It could be done anywhere, requiring only a quill and a sheaf of cheap paper. His first study was the silvermint bushes, large enough to protect the garden with their knife-like thorns. To practice his shading, he picked an orange off the ground, observing how light bounced off its skin at different times of the day. The plants were beautiful subjects, but they began to bore him. 

His attention turned to the shafit.

The first sketches ended in failure. None of the nearby workers would meet his gaze. From their downturned faces, he could only snatch vague impressions. He filled a whole page with his frustration before wising up. 

As a younger sibling, he knew how to get what he wanted. Pretending to be asleep, he watched the workers stand taller as they went further into the garden’s protective arms, the sun illuminating their features. Some of them gathered in groups, chattering as they picked up oranges. 

The man captured it all. He stared down at his drawings—bodies, faces, smiles. They were illusions, Suleiman’s curse for consorting with humans. They were parasites, leeching Daevabad’s resources from purebloods who actually deserved them. Everyone said they were unnatural, but the shafit were just… people. 

Ideas that had suited him comfortably now sat like shards of glass in his mind. He had to get them out. 

Part of him still feared the shafit, even as he tried to engage them in conversation. Fear became pity when they shrunk away, as if being perceived by a noble was a fate worse than death. He certainly didn’t expect one of them to approach _him_.

His luck changed as he slept in the midday sun one day. A shadow fell over him. He opened an eye, only to see a woman jolt backwards, tripping over her own feet. 

A curse escaped his mouth, but the woman didn’t understand Divasti. He counted his blessings before switching to Djinnistani. “Do you require my assistance?”

The woman pressed a finger against her lips. Now that he’d blinked the grit out of his eyes, he recognized her. Her frizzy hair was unmistakable, the light revealing henna-red undertones in its darkness. While she worked, it bounced like a rabbit’s tail with every step. 

The man had never seen her this close before. The woman’s eyelashes curved like scythes. They would be weapons in the arsenal of a high-born lady, but this was a shafit. She had no time for flattery. 

“Your superior officer is arriving soon.” The woman’s voice broke through his reverie. “You should do something. Make yourself look good.”

He blinked in surprise. “Thank you.” As a rule, noblemen didn’t get fired, and his superior officer couldn’t be surprised that he was lazing around when he had nothing to do. Still, her concern was touching. He gave her a shy smile. “What is your name?”

“You may call me Didi,” she said, in the composed voice of a goddess. Before he could remark upon it, she was gone. The foliage swallowed her whole. 

* * *

The man’s interest in Didi was purely intellectual. Most of his papers featured a variety of people, his mind flitting between countless subjects in a single day. When he saw the shafit woman lingering, closer than he’d ever seen her before, it seemed natural to make her his next study. 

Didi’s face was a graceful circle, bronzed by the sun, but its contours possessed the sharpness of a hard-lived life. Her nose was long, narrow, and statuesque, hooked from the side. She had arched brows and a pink rosebud of a mouth. He labored over all these little details, driven mad by the ones he couldn’t capture. 

When she exerted herself, color diffused across her cheeks. Sometimes, he wondered if the gentle flush emerged anywhere lower. Her tunic would be the perfect size for a gangly teenager, but it was too tight on her, clinging like a lover. He imagined peeling the dark gray cloth from her body and—

And _nothing_. The man renounced his thoughts. The vines, always protective of the shafit women, might strangle him for his lust. Even if they didn’t, the shame flooding his body was punishment enough. Didi had done nothing but help him, and this was how he responded. A million different sketches stared at him with judgement. He crumpled them all in a fit of self-loathing. 

A prickling sensation drew him out of his head. Someone was watching. Didi had turned to face him like a hunted gazelle. He kicked the paper balls far away and busied himself doing nothing.

As the evening arrived, the sky turned to lavender, hazy and cool. The man got up to take his break, but a tap on the shoulder stopped him. Didi stood behind him, a smoothed-out page in her hands. Despite wrinkling, the ink hadn’t smudged. “Did you draw this?”

They both knew the answer. “Yes.”

Didi’s expression didn’t change, but she stepped closer. Gold flecks revealed themselves in her coffee-brown eyes. “I didn’t find pictures of anyone else.” 

“I’ve drawn everybody in this garden.” To put her at ease, he added, “But I always burn the pages once I’m done with them.”

He said it to soothe her, but Didi shook her head. “I want to keep this one.” 

* * *

In the open, Didi and the man pretended to discuss the trivialities of garden maintenance, but nobody was fooled. Though the other shafit never warmed to him, his treatment of the woman made them a little less weary. 

One night, Didi grabbed her guard’s hand. Furtively, she guided him on an invisible, winding path through the garden. All of the other workers had long since left, and they were the only ones here. The isolation amplified every noise. When the man stepped on a stray tree branch, he heard the breaking of bone. He kept his grip tight, certain he’d be lost without her.

At the back, a thicket grew without interference. It resisted all attempts to be tamed, and the palace officials had learned to leave it alone. The man almost pulled Didi’s arm back when she moved to push aside a spiky bush, but it parted on its own, revealing a miniscule patch of land.

It was hers in essence, if not in name. Outside, the public area featured bizarre growth: blood-red roses the size of fists, trumpet-shaped flowers large enough to swallow your head, and oranges, enough to gorge on until eating them felt like death. The offerings here were modest in comparison, but they felt like home. 

Didi certainly treated it like one, cleaning debris away before she gestured to a jute rug, topped with two mended cushions discarded from the palace. “Now we can talk.”

And so they talked. The man had never struggled with court niceties, but here, he didn’t need them. Every topic became engaging when she discussed it in her lilting voice. When they discussed their childhoods, she reminisced about starving for days without a care. He was horrified. 

He began smuggling her flaky pastries from the palace kitchens. The impulse was charitable, but when she fell asleep, head on his shoulder, he got the better end of the deal. She was always warm, and her hair smelled like chamomile. 

She grew the flower in her sanctuary, along with a variety of other medicinal plants—dandelions, basil, lavender. She stole what she couldn’t grow, using it all to brew concoctions for the other shafit servants. Didi might have been an apothecary in another life, but the world confined her dreams to the thicket. 

Elsewhere, news of the Banu Nahida’s new hospital spread like fire. The Qahtanis had conquered Daevabad as shafit supporters, but over the centuries, those ideals had faded into obscurity. The man remained silent as everyone else argued furiously over the plan, memorizing every scrap of information, even what he overheard from Banu Nahri herself. Once he filtered out the distasteful bits, he recounted everything to Didi. Whenever he mentioned the hospital, her face brightened. 

One day, an idea came to him. “If Banu Nahri is planning to hire shafit, maybe you could get a job there. You have the skill, and... I could put in a good word for you, anonymously.”

That was the first and only time Didi kissed him, lips soft as petals. She couldn’t even look him in the eyes after a Daeva mob ravaged the hospital construction grounds and the shafit camps, burning everything in their path. 

They no longer sat together. The man shredded his palms trying to shove into the thicket by himself, but the pain was meaningless. As Navasatem approached, he nursed his wounds alone.

* * *

By the first day of celebration, the man’s hands had healed enough to hold objects comfortably. He put them to good use, relishing the condensation that soothed his scar tissue as he grabbed his bottle. He was downing plum beer at a speed that would impress the emir. 

His brother was not amused. “Slow down,” the now-head of house admonished. “You’re drinking too much for someone so young. I don’t want to carry you when we’re so far from home.”

The man snorted. “You’re one to talk.” During Navasatem, it was socially acceptable, socially _encouraged_ to start drinking at dawn, an indulgence that most compatriots of Muntadhir followed religiously. Unfortunately, his brother’s new position had infused him with an irritating sense of responsibility. 

The second son had insisted on arriving early at the docks only so he could see Banu Nahri set off, posed as Anahid with a majestic chador streaming from her head, the shedu-carved bow of her boat-shaped chariot heralding her entrance. Pressing against the barricade, he looked up, squinting against the sun. From this perspective, the chariot’s bulk made Nahri look pocket-sized. A joy lifted his spirits, distracting him momentarily, but once he’d paid respects, the parade’s glacial pace lost all appeal. 

He couldn’t go back home. The ancestral manor’s domestic bliss would antagonize him. Normally, his sister-in-law would have accompanied him to the docks, but her stomach had grown too swollen with her firstborn child. Preparations for the impending event dominated the household, leaving room for little else.

Leaving his brother behind, the man drifted through the streets aimlessly, bottle still in hand. He discarded it on the way. What he really wanted wasn’t the taste but the stupor it brought, a hazy delirium that dulled the senses. He had it now, no destination in mind as he walked, not bothering to hide his expensive clothing. 

On any other day, he would be a rich man begging to get robbed, but nobody took the bait. To rectify this cosmic imbalance, he bought something from the nearest vendor, a pendant with a gilded bloom. It seemed that Navasatem made fools of everyone. What was he to do with this trinket? He couldn’t answer the question until he saw her.

Didi stood in front of a shafit tenement, a structure that made him think of haphazardly stacked crates at the dock. The squalor highlighted her fine clothing, a modest tunic of navy blue, with white embroidery at the collar and sleeves. A red teardrop between her brows was the only adornment on her face. 

The man waited for Didi to speak first, the pattern all their previous encounters had followed. He wanted her to straighten and meet his eyes, but all she did was hunch her shoulders. Was she… ashamed?

He didn’t like that. Moving closer, he deposited the necklace in her palm. “I bought this for you.”

Didi examined his gift before putting it on, tension leaching from her body. “Thank you.” The fake gold looked cheap against her rich brown skin, but there was nothing to be done about it. “Why are you here?” 

“I was watching the parade.” Before the man could process the ramifications of his idea, he added, “If you haven’t gone already, I could escort you to the barricades.” 

No, he couldn’t. Even if they could be seen in the same areas, they couldn’t be seen _together_. It would give people ideas, and the stigma would mark her forever. Didi saved him from his blunder, worrying the bloom pendant absentmindedly. “I never go to the parade, anyway. You can’t see anything from the shafit area.”

That was when the screaming began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the books, it's implied that daeva are completely intolerant of shafit, but there are little details that suggest otherwise. the biggest one is that rustam wanted to go back to daevabad after nahri was born. i'm assuming he was going to stage a revolt b/c the alternative is that he just really missed ghassan breaking all his bones.
> 
> so now, the question is: how would he do that? who would support him? you could say that nahri's birth just possessed him with delusional optimism, but rustam never placed all his hopes and dreams in reclaiming daevabad the way manizheh did, and i really don't think he would risk duriya and nahri unless he actually had a chance.
> 
> popular views on social issues are rarely as monolithic as history portrays them (a point i will elaborate more about in the next chapter), so if a baga nahid came out in support of shafit, some regular daevas would probably agree with him.
> 
> but his natural allies would be the daeva nobles who allied with shafit champion zaydi al qahtani during the civil war, so for this au, i decided to write him reincarnated into one of the daeva noble families. we never see them much in the actual books (probably b/c they're muntadhir's set) but i liked exploring the interior life of someone raised in a noble house!


End file.
